Californian Richard Yuan Li, 20, has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in SIM-swap attacks targeting at least 20 individuals, as well as the attempted extortion of a New Orleans-based doctor and cryptocurrency investor known only as ‘Investor A.’ Li is believed to have collaborated with others from January 2018 until February 2019 to defraud numerous victims through SIM-swapping attacks, with some of the co-conspirators remaining unknown to the United States Attorney’s Office. SIM-swaps involve rerouting a victim’s SIM to a phone in possession of the attackers, allowing them to gain access to personal information …

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, privacy was already at a premium. Now, we’re facing a further dive into the uncharted territory of pervasive privacy intrusions. Targeted advertising tools in your web browser already track your favorite websites, purchases and habits, and browser privacy is a foregone relic. That data is then centralized under the auspices of a big technology firm’s servers and sold to the highest bidder or leveraged to glean a competitive edge. Governments maintain wide-ranging surveillance on internet communications, and financial privacy is virtually nonexistent for any bank-related activities — encompassing the vast majority of financial transactions. Most people …

In a rare instance of cooperation, Google and Apple, two pillars of the global tech industry, announced a joint effort to create a COVID-19 exposure tracing application for mobile phones in conjunction with world governments. The app, which is set to be available on both Android and iOS phones, relies on Bluetooth technology to warn against potential exposure to a person infected with COVID-19. Due to its participating organizations, all three of which have shoddy track-records on privacy, the application immediately raised the suspicions of privacy proponents. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a staunch supporter of digital privacy, posed questions to …

Google Play market and Apple's AppStore will reportedly soon feature the Telegram Open Network (TON) operating system (OS), an end-to-end open-source infrastructure that allows developers and users to work with the TON blockchain. The TON OS will soon become available on smartphones and personal computers for mainstream users, a source close to Telegram told Russian news agency RBC on April 29. TON OS is not an alternative to existing operating systems, but will serve as an add-on for devices, making them able to support blockchain applications. Big plans for the future The source said that with TON OS, users can …

In recent months, big-name players like Google and Apple have been going the extra mile to showcase their privacy features to the world. However, as most people are now aware, these multinational companies have business models that are centered around collecting and aggregating the data of their customers. In this regard, growing interest in privacy-first browsers like Brave clearly suggests a collective increase in internet users’ concern over how their personal information is being accumulated, stored and utilized on a day-to-day basis. Individuals all over the globe have become so accustomed to using free search, chat, video and other web …

Recent changes to Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in iOS may have killed burner wallets for iPhone users. Burner wallets are non-custodial wallets that store a user's private key in the browser’s local storage. A change made by Apple to Safari’s Webkit engine meant to enhance user privacy may jeopardize this model. This change will cap “the expiry of client-side cookies to seven days”. This implies that burner wallets will be destroyed after that short period. Although burner wallets were never intended for long-term storage of cryptocurrency, some users choose not to follow this rule. Exception to the rule Fortunately, there …

The world’s largest technology companies have made concerted efforts to investigate and integrate blockchain technologies over the past few years. Partly driven by a massive boom in interest caused by Bitcoin’s stellar bull run in 2017, blockchain technology quickly became the new catchword in tech. A swathe of startups entered the fray during that period as entrepreneurs looked to cash in on the hype in the space. Bigger companies that weren’t looking into the benefits of the technology faced the risk of being left behind and began to carefully explore solutions to their own business mechanisms. Others had already begun …

MyEtherWallet has released a mobile app called MEW Wallet that allows users to buy crypto in under 15 seconds — but there’s a catch. Users need to have Apple Pay and face fees of 3.99% in the United States, and 5.25% in the rest of the world. Google Pay is not yet supported. Still, this is the first fully-fledged mobile app and first fiat onramp for MEW — one of the widely used cryptocurrency wallets in the world. The fiat on-ramp is provided through a partnership with blockchain money transfer company Wyre. MEW founder, Kosala Hemachandra, told Cointelegraph the mobile …

Earlier today, March 10th, 2020, Brave announced a partnership with TAP Network which will allow its users to redeem their Basic Attention Tokens for “for real-world rewards” offered by 250,000 brands that are a part of the network. Access to rewards is limited to US users The announcement says that Brave users in the U.S. will be able to redeem their BATs for “tokens for gift cards from hundreds of top national brands”. These brands include Uber, Starbucks, Xbox, Playstation, Hulu, HBO, Amazon, Apple, Target, and Walmart. Cointelegraph reached out to Brave to clarify whether this new benefit will be …

Speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, cybersecurity experts Aaron Turner and Georgia Weidman discussed two-factor authentication and biometrics as means to securing one’s phone. Although they concur that the two-factor authentication is the way to go, there are certain caveats. Authenticator apps like Google Authenticator generally provide better security than SMS-based schemes, however, they are only as good as the devices running them. iOS v. Android — safest phones Turner also dispels the myth that iPhones are more secure than Android devices and warns against iPhones that run anything but the latest iOS 13. Amongst android smartphones, he …

Coming every Sunday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week World Economic Forum debuts framework for central bank digital currency It was a c-c-c-cold week in Davos, but Cointelegraph’s reporters wrapped up warm to bring you all the news from the World Economic Forum. One particularly big announcement saw the WEF unveil a central bank digital currency policymaker toolkit. The framework, created in tandem with …

Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of major encrypted messenger Telegram, argues that Apple’s cloud service iCloud is “now officially a surveillance tool.” Citing a Jan. 21 Reuters report, Durov claimed that applications like WhatsApp — which rely on iCloud to store private messages — are “part of the problem.” Telegram CEO delivered his verdict in a post on his official Telegram channel on Jan. 21: “iCloud is now officially a surveillance tool. Apps that are relying on it to store your private messages (such as WhatsApp) are part of the problem.” Apple dropped its end-to-end encryption plans for iCloud two …